I know this is a strange thing to blog about or even review, but what the hell – here goes. I’m bored. If the title of this post doesn’t interest you, you’ll probably be bored very quickly too. Otherwise if you’ve got one of these, or thinking about getting one, please feel free to read on.

I live in a barn conversion. It’s a long story that I’ll not bore you with, but basically the conversion wasn’t designed or built particularly well. There’s a whole host of problems with it. One of the biggest oversights was not including easy access to the roof space. There’s also quite a few tiny gaps to the outside world where the roof meets the outside walls etc.

Over the years mice have liked living in my nice warm loft. I don’t particularly mind them being there, which is fortunate as I have no access to them to set traps and remove them. Equally, they can’t get into the main house (very easily) to set traps to remove me. If I was being a bit of a twat, I’d say that we have a reasonably harmonious symbiotic relationship. Otherwise, if I didn’t want to sound like a total knob, I’d say that I can live fairly happily alongside my furry friends.

If you know me, you’ll probably know that I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to spiders. I hate them. Really hate them. So perhaps this isn’t the best place for me to live. I get some HUGE ones here – at least big enough to put a saddle on. They find their way in via the gaps that I mentioned earlier, eat a load of pies, grow some fur and promptly terrorise me when I least expect it. I had one crawl over my head the other week whilst I was in bed. I wasn’t impressed and frankly nearly shat myself.

Depending on quite how well you know me, you may also know that I sometimes have real problems getting to sleep. So lately I’ve been lying awake at night thinking that a big horse sized spider is going to attach itself onto my face ‘Alien’ stylee, accompanied by a background noise of scampering mice and loud chewing noises. It’s all frankly not been helping me doze off.

Anyway, when I was channel hopping the other day I flicked past a tv shopping channel. They were selling electronic “Pest Repellers”. Perhaps I’ve been living in the dark ages, but I’ve never heard of them before and to be honest, they sound like a total scam. But I quite liked the idea of ridding myself of two headaches. So off I toddled to ebay and bought two “Vermatik 4 in 1 Pest Repellers” (much cheaper than the ones on telly!). Anyway a week ago, they arrived.

The ones I got are supposed to:

1. Have some kind of ultrasonic noise that insects/rodents don’t like.
2. Put some weird electromagnetic wave through the mains wiring loop in the house.
3. Have some ionic thing which purifies the air.
4. Have a sexy nightlight.

The plan was, buy the things on ebay, then flog them on ebay again if they don’t work. Couldn’t lose. It was a plan with no drawbacks. So what’s happened after a week of it being plugged in?

Well the blue night light is frankly pathetic. It lights up about a square centimetre of space. The thing also clicks quite loudly sometimes and I swear I can hear a high pitch noise occasionally (hopefully it’s not tinnitus!).

Unless I’d read the leaflet about the air purifier part I’d never have known to be honest – that’s frankly a waste of time – there ain’t nothing that can cleanse the air of the scent of my socks.

I know, what about the pest repeller part? Well, the first couple of nights, there actually seemed to be a lot more, quite loud mice scampering. Since then it does seem to have lessened and I’ve not heard any mice at all for a good 48 hours. There was however an enormous, Val Kilmer sized spider in my bath the other morning. I honestly thought he was going to ask me to loofah his back whilst it played with my rubber duck and toy boat. But other than that and the odd money spider, I’ve not seen any spiders either in the last week.

Anyway, I know it’s early days and I’m still VERY skeptical about this whole electronic pest repeller thing, but the early signs for me are quite promising. Perhaps the mice have just gone on their summer hols for a week or two and perhaps the spiders are currently formulating some kind of ingenious plan to rubber duck me to death.

The manual does say wait 2-4 weeks for results (which is probably quite conveniently so that your statutory rights have well and truly lapsed by then!), so I’ll leave them running a while longer.

But are my hopes of a spider and mouse free night up unnecessarily? Has anyone else had any luck with these things or is the above pure coincidence and it’s really just an empty little box with lil’ flashy lights on?

Oh, and you can betcha ass that two seconds after I post this they’ll be spiders and mice galore in my flat.

[edit] Just remembered… this particular device stupidly hangs down quite a long way below the plug socket (see pic), so if you’ve got a lot of very low plug holes like me, you might be limited where you can actually plug this bad boy in! [/edit]

[edit 2] Yup, as predicted, I’ve just found a Laurence Fishburne sized spider in the hall! [/edit 2]